


we lit matches by the roadside to show you the way

by eneiryu



Series: the lighthouse on the shore was lit up red and gold [2]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Advice You Give Is Advice You Wish You'd Heard, Grief/Mourning, M/M, Redemption, Self-Actualization by Proxy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-09
Updated: 2019-03-09
Packaged: 2019-11-14 11:18:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,378
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18051509
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eneiryu/pseuds/eneiryu
Summary: The second Theo steps into the clearing and sees the damage, he wishes he was back in that basement with Monroe; it sure as hell hadhurtless than this.





	we lit matches by the roadside to show you the way

Even from the edge of the clearing, Theo can see the toppled pieces of Tracy’s and Josh’s headstones, the stacked rocks that had made them scattered and scored with bullet marks.

He stops dead and stares at the sight, feeling approximately like someone just socked him in the stomach, though Corey continues to pick his way forward. It doesn’t help that Theo can smell the still-pungent reek of blood—his own and the hunters’—soaked into the ground, clogging up his nostrils and winching the harsh feeling in his chest even tighter. Much as he tries to stop himself, he can’t keep his head from turning, can’t resist searching out the spot—the dirt and leaf litter stained dark black—where he’d fallen and had laid, helpless and dying, while Rossler and Preston had sworn and raged and eventually patched themselves up enough to drag Theo away, leaving their dead comrade behind. Small favors, though, someone—the Sheriff, maybe—had cleaned up the third hunter’s body, but regardless Theo can see the second patch of dried blood not far from where he himself had finally gone down.

 _Jesus christ_ , Theo thinks, his expression twisting; his fight with Rossler and the other hunters had practically _desecrated_ this place, this once-haven that Corey had tried to make for Tracy and Josh.

“Corey, I’m so sorry,” Theo tells him, his voice cracking on the last word.

But Corey doesn’t even bother looking back at him, just kneels down in front of the disrupted markers and replies, a little caustically, “For what, being here and keeping me from being kidnapped, tortured, and probably murdered?”

Theo opens and closes his mouth a few times, taken aback, but Corey’s response pretty well and truly slams shut that line of discussion. So after another moment of hesitation, Theo shuts his mouth and starts carefully moving forward again, stops just behind Corey and looks over his shoulder at the bullet-pocked headstones, Corey’s hands resting on his thighs and his posture still as he stares down at the same. In the wreck of the toppled rocks, Theo can see the faint shine of Tracy’s necklace, the dull gleam of Josh’s bracelet. It’s hard to tell if they’re damaged without moving the fallen stones, but Theo would chew off his own hands before he’d dare to touch them without Corey’s say-so.

Ribcage feeling like it’s holding in a storm and just so completely out of his element that he doesn’t know what else to do, Theo—after mentally debating it for a second, Liam’s constant comments about cheating pricking at him—reaches out to Corey’s scent for some kind of clue as to what he’s thinking. He’s expecting grief, or anger, but while those two emotions are _there_ , they’re muted beneath a layer of quiet stillness, some inseparable combination of resolve and shrewdness and just general steadiness. Surprised, Theo flicks a look at the side of Corey’s face, his level expression, and wonders, a bit.

He’s still staring silently down at Corey when Corey suddenly heaves out a huge breath and reaches forward, starts pulling away the chipped and damaged rocks until he can snag the chain of Tracy’s necklace, pull it up and out of the mess.

“Here,” He murmurs, and holds it up, the chain dangling from the tip of his finger, until Theo jerks into motion and reaches forward, lets Corey carefully pool it into his cupped palms. He turns back to Josh’s headstone, after, starts digging out Josh’s bracelet, but as he works, he asks, “How’s it look?”

Theo—who’d unconsciously closed his hands around the necklace, the gesture both counterproductive and a day late—colors some and opens his hands back up, looks down at the small pendant and then tilts his grip so that the necklace slides gently into the cup of his left palm. It frees up his right hand so that he can reach over, stroke a shaking thumb across the flat metal surface, clear away the stone dust. His skin catches on a few sharp edges and he winces, has to swallow past his suddenly-tight throat.

“Some chips of rock must have struck it when the headstones were hit,” Theo finally answers, voice hoarse.

Corey hums but doesn’t otherwise respond, just twists some so that he can offer Theo Josh’s bracelet over his shoulder.

“Switch me,” He orders, “Let me take a look.”

Shoving down the reluctance in his chest, suddenly desperate to keep hold of it, Theo reaches forward with his right hand and takes Josh’s bracelet, then tips his left hand over so that Tracy’s necklace flows into Corey’s waiting hand. Once he has it in hand, Corey turns back forward to study it himself, and Theo looks down at Josh’s bracelet, pinches it between his thumbs and forefingers so that he can spread it out straight between his hands, searching for nicks or other damage. There’s a ragged patch of discolored leather where it was likely crushed between two falling and fast-moving stones, and the metal fasteners are scratched. Closing his eyes, Theo brings his hands—now clenched around Josh’s bracelet—up to his face and presses them hard against his mouth, tries to breathe around the lump lodged large and immovable in his throat.

But Corey surprises him again.

“Not bad, all things considered,” He finally concludes, and Theo’s eyes snap open and he stares down at Corey, the shock plain on his face.

Corey tilts his head up to meet his eyes and for a moment his brow furrows, but then his expression smooths out and he sighs, looks away, back down at the toppled headstones.

“This is all fixable, Theo,” Corey tells him, and for all that his delivery is a little stiff, it’s clear he means it. Then he glances back up and adds, “Liam and the rest of us having to bury your corpse wouldn’t have been.”

Theo’s breath leaves him in a rush, that gut-punched feeling back with interest, but Corey doesn’t keep looking at him, just holds out Tracy’s necklace for Theo to take.

“Mind keeping a hold of that and Josh’s bracelet? I’m going to clear off their headstones, see which rocks can be salvaged,” Corey says, apparently determined to just keep pushing forward, tense atmosphere be damned.

Theo reaches forward automatically and—gently, reverently—takes Tracy’s necklace, clutches it tight along with Josh’s bracelet. He stands there stupidly, unsure what to do with himself as Corey does as he’d said he was going to and starts cleaning up the headstones, Theo’s hands and their precious items held close to his chest, and then he bites his lip, looks down at Corey.

“What can I do?” He finally asks.

Corey pauses and frowns thoughtfully, then glances up at him, “Look around and see if you can find some new stones we could use? Some of these are pretty well and destroyed.”

He holds up a sharp-edged chunk of stone demonstratively, obviously a piece of a larger rock that had shattered on impact with a bullet.

“Okay,” Theo agrees quietly, “Okay, I can do that.”

He starts to turn towards the edges of the clearing to start looking, then stops when he realizes that he’s still holding his clasped hands in front of him. Hesitating, feeling a little unreasonably superstitious, he eventually grimaces at himself and transfers both Tracy’s necklace and Josh’s bracelet to one hand so that he can unzip his jacket, then reach inside to tuck both into his inside pocket. He zips his jacket back up when he’s done, though he can’t help but press one hand to the outside of the pocket just to feel the edges of the necklace and bracelet press against his palm, his ribs.

Ten minutes later and he’s found a handful of good replacement rocks, all of them carefully cleaned using his jacket sleeve and then carried over and stacked next to Corey, who absently thanks him each time, his focus on fixing the headstones. It means that when Theo unthinkingly turns to keep looking for more stones and finds himself staring, frozen, directly at the fallen log where he’d hidden his _own_ totems to Josh and Tracy, Corey doesn’t notice.

There’s no way that he can get to it to check Tracy’s pendant or Josh’s quartz without Corey noticing—the log is two feet behind the headstones, that’s _why_ Theo had hidden them there in the first place—and Theo hesitates, caught between two conflicting impulses. On the one hand, Corey _invited_ him out here. He came to the Geyers’ and personally asked if Theo wanted to come, even though he could have gone by himself and Theo would never have been the wiser. But on the other hand…

On the other hand, yesterday Corey had said _let me guess, you came here to gloat, right?_ , had shoved Theo hard and asked him if it hadn’t been enough to murder Tracy and Josh. He’d accused him of coming here to _appreciate his handiwork_. And sure, less than eight hours later Corey had saved his life—had saved it several times—but that doesn’t erase their history, doesn’t change what Theo did.

Theo isn’t sure _what_ it changes.

But Theo—Theo had said _I’d give anything to change what I did to Josh and Tracy_ and Corey had said _I believe you_ , and so Theo shoves away the half-panicked voice in the back of his head, the cornered-animal instinct to hide and lie and snarl, and picks his way carefully forward until he can kneel down in front of the fallen log. He can sense Corey pause behind him, obviously confused, but ignores him for the moment, concentrates on reaching through the small hollow in the wood until he can wrap his fingers around Josh’s quartz, Tracy’s pendant, pull them both carefully out.

There’d been a few fresh holes gauged through the log but ironically the headstones probably served as something of barriers, because both the quartz and pendant appear unharmed. Theo cradles them both in his left palm, uses his right hand to gently maneuver them so that he can check them over, but they’re fine, apart from a few specks of dirt and moss that Theo carefully brushes away.

He looks up with a jolt when Corey suddenly kneels down next to him, having completely missed Corey standing and coming forward. Corey stares down at the quartz and pendant, his expression unreadable and his scent when Theo instinctively reaches out to a tangled mess. Biting his lip, Theo resists the urge to close his fists around the totems and instead offers them forward so that Corey can get a closer look, could reach out and take them if he wanted.

But Corey doesn’t.

Instead he leaves them cupped in Theo’s palms, simply reaches forward to trace gentle fingers over the surface of the quartz, the face of the pendant. His face breaks out into soft smile as he does, the corners of his eyes crinkling up. He looks up at Theo—who’s looking back at him, terror and a desperate sort of hope grappling in his chest—and his smile widens.

“I could never get Tracy to believe me when I told her how stunning her scales were in the light,” He tells Theo, his fingers still playing over the totems cupped in Theo’s palms and his scent taking on a warm, fond edge. Then his smile becomes a grin and he adds, “Josh didn’t really need any help seeing how phenomenal his lightning was.”

Theo can’t help the wet, half-choked laugh that escapes him at that, “No. No, he, uh. He really didn’t.”

Corey grins at him one last time and then he looks away, back to where he’d laid out all the pieces of Josh’s and Tracy’s headstones, ready to be reassembled. He looks back to Theo and smiles more softly, then climbs to his feet, clearly about to head over to start putting them back together. Chest burning with an unexpected sort of warmth—the heat of it starting to melt the persistent frozen core at the heart of himself—Theo transfers the quartz and pendant back to one hand and prepares to put them back in the log.

He can’t, though, because Corey grabs his arm and stops him.

Theo glances up at him in surprise and Corey meets his eyes and shakes his head, then simply says, “Don’t be an idiot.”

He releases Theo’s arm after, but doesn’t move until Theo—after a few seconds of stunned staring—finally blinks and climbs carefully to his feet, quartz and pendant held close. Then he turns and picks his way back to the headstones, Theo following him and kneeling down next to him after Corey settles back down on his own knees.

“Here, Tracy’s pendant first,” Corey murmurs, holding out his hands for it.

Theo carefully disentangles its chain from where he’d wrapped it around Josh’s quartz and hands it over, Corey taking it from him just as gently. Once he has it in hand he leans forward and places it in the middle of the leftmost, flat stone slab; the base of Tracy’s headstone. He loops the chain around a few times and then places the pendant on top, the opalescent shimmer of it shining in the winter sunlight. Theo swallows at the sight, his attention caught and held by it, and doesn’t realize that Corey had paused in his work until he jerks out of his own thoughts to find Corey studying his hands in his lap; deliberately giving Theo time.

“Sorry,” Theo mutters, and offers Corey the quartz.

But Corey just replies, “What do you think these graves are _for?_ ” And Theo has to bite back an involuntary noise, his shoulders hunching.

Corey takes the quartz, though, deliberately ignoring Theo’s reaction, his demeanor not so much unkind as rough, dissonant; the personification of all the shit they still had left to figure out between the two of them. Whatever it is, it works; Theo’s defensiveness starts to drain away and Theo swallows, unzips his jacket as Corey arranges Josh’s quartz on the rightmost headstone slab so that he can reach into his internal pocket to retrieve Tracy’s necklace and Josh’s bracelet tucked safely away. Corey’s ready as he pulls them out, waits while Theo untangles Tracy’s chain from the leather of Josh’s bracelet and takes the necklace first, loops it around itself and then places it carefully down next to the pendant. Then he takes Josh’s bracelet, lets it curl as it wants to and then sets it down so that it’s covering and half-wrapped around the quartz.

That done, he leans back on his heels and surveys both headstone bases, the collection of totems arranged on top.

“What do you think?” He asks, glancing at Theo, “Look good?”

“Looks perfect,” Theo answers quietly, and Corey gives him a distracted smile, leans forward to start arranging the smaller stones on top of the base slabs to resurrect Josh’s and Tracy’s headstones.

They spend the next hour in the clearing, cleaning up what they can. Theo finds a handful of malformed bullets and shell casings and gathers them up, tucks them away in his jacket’s internal pocket in case the Sheriff or Agent McCall can make use of them. Corey winds up standing over the dark patch of Theo’s black blood on the ground for a long minute, his expression unreadable, and then he reaches forward with a foot and scatters the stained leaves, sweeps away what he can of the stained dirt; he looks up at Theo when he’s done and Theo—after his own hesitation—gives him a short, sharp nod.

The afternoon sun is starting to get low by the time they head back to Mason’s car, borrowed by Corey for the purposes of this trip. The first twenty minutes of the walk aren’t exactly uncomfortable, but they’re—weighty, maybe, all their ghosts walking along with them, filling up the air between them. Then Corey’s scent suddenly lightens and he gives Theo a sly look and asks _so what exactly did happen with Liam yesterday_ , and Theo nearly trips over his own feet.

It’s worth it, though, for the way that Corey has to pause, bent at the waist and _guffawing_ after Theo tells him, Theo’s resigned expression almost doing nothing to cover up the way his own chest goes light.

They get back to the Geyers’ house just as the sun finishes setting, Theo already reaching for his seatbelt as Corey slows—expecting a quick drop-off—but then Corey stops completely at the curb and throws the car into park, turns it off. Brow furrowing, Theo lets his released seatbelt retract but doesn’t move to get out, just leans back against the passenger seat and forces himself to meet Corey’s eyes, his earlier tangled mess of guilt and fear and discomfort resurging.

Corey isn’t looking at him, though; he’s staring straight out of the windshield, both hands wrapped tightly around the steering wheel, his jaw working. Finally he relaxes his hands and slumps back, tilts his head slightly so that he can meet Theo’s questioning gaze.

“I know what you were trying to do in that basement,” Corey tells him bluntly, and Theo full-body flinches, but Corey isn’t done, “I was the one who stopped Rossler. Pretended to be the interrogator and started yelling about how he was going to kill you so that Monroe would come running.”

Theo has to look away from his penetrating stare, drops his gaze down to his hands in his lap as he answers quietly, “I didn’t see any other way out.”

Corey snorts out a humorless laugh in response and runs a hand through his hair, props his head up against the side of door with his braced elbow when he’s done, “That’s because you don’t trust anybody.”

Theo turns his head to look at him but Corey is back to staring out the windshield, expression open but a little—a little unreadable, even setting aside the dim street lighting.

“Back when—when—” He stops, expression twisting in frustration before he continues forcefully, “Back during everything with the Dread Doctors and the Beast, when you were my _alpha—_ ” He spits out the last word with so much vitriol that Theo winces, “I thought it was just because you were a paranoid, controlling asshole. I didn’t really get the real reason until I had to watch you try to suicide by hunter yesterday.”

Theo realizes that he’s brought one hand up to rub at his chest, at the tight, claustrophobic feeling between his ribs that Corey’s words—his accusations—had set to twisting, and he drops it, licks his bottom lip and says, “Corey, I don’t—”

But Corey cuts him off, “You don’t trust anybody because you don’t think that they can trust you.”

Theo looks at him, frozen, mouth dropped open and barely breathing in his shock. Corey meets his gaze for a moment and then turns back to the windshield and the mostly-empty street, nothing but the quiet sounds of twilight in suburbia to break up the suffocating tension in the car, and really not even that.

“That’s what I realized when I finally figured out what the hell you were trying to do,” Corey continues, voice softer now, “And that made sense, because really, no one _should_ trust you—” Theo flinches again, but it’s _true_ , “—except I realized something else, too.”

Corey turns to look at him, his head still braced on his arm against the door, his eyes dark and the corners of his lips weighed down with—with _something_ , something Theo can’t decipher with the scrambled mess that is his thoughts and instincts, and then he looks away again, back forward.

“You don’t think that anybody can trust you because _you_ don’t trust you,” Corey finishes, and he sounds—he sounds _sad_ , almost.

Theo stares at the side of his face, his breaths coming in short, hitching waves, his eyes starting to burn. _That’s because you don’t trust anybody_ , Corey had said, and Theo had known, deep in his _bones_ when he’d been strung up in that basement, that no one—the McCall pack or otherwise—would find him. _You don’t trust anybody because you don’t think that they can trust you_ , Corey had continued, and Theo had known he’d break, that he would betray the McCall pack to make the pain stop, regardless of everything that they’d done for him.

 _You don’t think that anybody can trust you because_ you _don’t trust you_ , Corey had finished, and, well.

Theo turns back forward, away from Corey, his breathing now shuddering in and out of him, his shoulders heaving and his expression twisting painfully. The sound of his ragged breathing fills up the cab of the car and Theo squeezes his eyes shut, hands clenching into fists on his thighs and head dropping low. A part of him keeps trying to listen for Corey, or test his scent—old instincts screaming—but he _can’t_ , his head too much of a whirling mess and the vulnerable core of him already flayed open.

And anyway, Corey doesn’t say anything, just sits silently next to him as the minutes stretch on and lets Theo shudder his way through the emotions battering up his insides, the truth of him that Corey just laid bare eating away at all his self-deception, his carefully-constructed rationalizations. Corey just sits silently next him, a steady presence and source of heat, of warmth, of _life_ , and waits.

It takes maybe five minutes, but finally Theo sucks in a huge lungful of air, exhales it out slowly through his nose. He opens his eyes when he’s done, his eyelashes coming part reluctantly, stuck together with salt, and ignores the—paranoid, controlling—voice in the back of his head that orders him to hide, to keep Corey from seeing him, and meets Corey’s level gaze.

“Look,” Corey starts once he does, “Everything is still so fucked up, and I don’t know what it’s going to take to change that, but…”

He stops, his hands returning unconsciously to the steering wheel and clenching around it, the creaking of the leather thunderously loud in Theo’s ears.

“I told myself that I wasn’t going to be able to handle watching Liam, and his mom, and the Sheriff bury you. And that was _true_ , but…” He darts a look at Theo, then looks back forward, “It wasn’t the only reason.”

“Corey—” Theo starts, voice rasping like someone went after his vocal chords with a handful of steel wool. But Corey doesn’t let him finish.

“You have to start trusting people, Theo,” Corey orders, and this time he turns to look at Theo and holds his surprised gaze, unwavering, “Tell yourself whatever you have to in order to get past your own shit, but don’t punish the people who’ve come to care about you because you’re so wrapped up in punishing yourself.”

And Theo feels his face immediately twist, has to jerk his head away and towards the passenger-side window to hide his flayed open expression, his whole body bowing like Corey just gut-punched him. It takes another few minutes for him to breath through the sudden pain, to gather up the scattered remnants of his composure and straighten back up, turn back to Corey.

Corey meets his eyes for a second and then gives him a small, barely-there smile and looks away, “Ten bucks says Liam’s got his ear pressed up against the front door, trying to hear why we’ve been sitting here for the last twenty minutes.”

Theo chokes out a helpless laugh, takes the invitation and stretches his senses out towards the house. And what he finds causes him to smile, wide and genuine, his chest twisting again, but this time with an overwhelming surge of warmth, of _gratitude_.

“He’s got his headphones on, actually, and the music blasting,” Theo tells Corey, and watches Corey’s expression flicker in surprise.

This time it’s Corey who looks away, off-balanced. Theo feels his mouth quirk up in another smile and he turns for the door, gets it half-open and one leg out of the car before he stops, turns back to Corey.

“You’re right,” He tells Corey bluntly, ignoring Corey’s taken aback expression, “You’re right about all of it. So let me return the favor, if I can.”

Corey frowns at him, brow furrowing, “What do you mean?”

Theo licks his bottom lip and looks away briefly, then looks back, “You and I both nearly died yesterday because of the secrets we’ve been keeping. Speaking of having to start trusting people…” Theo pauses, then finishes quietly, “Mason would understand. You know he would.”

Corey’s expression spasms and he jerks his head away, his hands tightening around the steering wheel. He doesn’t say anything for long enough that Theo exhales quietly and finishes exiting the car, is about to shut the door behind him when Corey says his name.

“Mason isn’t the only one,” Corey tells him simply, once Theo has bent down to look at him.

Theo stares at him for a minute, mouth opening softly in his surprise, and then he bites his lip and nods. Corey gives him a brief flicker of a smile and then turns back forward, so Theo shuts the car door and steps back, stands silently on the sidewalk and watches Corey drive away. He stands there long enough that he can’t see the back of Mason’s car anymore, can’t hear it even when he stretches out his senses and listens for it, and then he turns and heads for the Geyers’ front door.

Two days later and Theo finds himself staring down at a bunch of white lilies, placed carefully before both Josh’s and Tracy’s graves, Liam standing close enough beside him to be pressed, warm and perfect, against Theo’s side. He catches the look on Theo’s face as Theo stares down at the flowers and turns to frown down at them, too, obviously curious.

“What is it?” He asks.

Theo smiles and turns so that he can press his face against Liam’s hair, breathe him in.

“It’s Mason,” Theo answers, “Corey brought Mason here.”

\---

Art by [ArtZeppo](https://artzeppo.tumblr.com/)

**Author's Note:**

> All feedback loved. If you liked, consider a comment or a [reblog](https://eneiryu.tumblr.com/post/183337412510/we-lit-matches-by-the-roadside-to-show-you-the-way).


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